


(what i can do) to get back to you

by eurycleia (oddysseeus)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Akaashi Keiji-centric, Akaashi is a mess, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Writer Akaashi Keiji, plot ends up revolving around a bag of chips for some reason, there was an attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24109168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddysseeus/pseuds/eurycleia
Summary: The snacks remind him of movie nights and pool parties. People say high school is the best time in your life. Others say it’s the worst. There are still many years to prove which of these applies, but Akaashi doesn’t like his odds. It stings to learn comfort food isn’t comforting anymore. It stings to know it’s been a decade and he can’t let go.akaashi is a coward. a lonely coward, an overthinking mess, and its been nine years but he cant forget any of the moments, any of the ways bokuto made him feel.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	(what i can do) to get back to you

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first haikyuu work and i wrote this in a Mood as you will be able to tell. enjoy  
> title from taemin's song back to you

The bed is empty.

He doesn’t know why it comes as a surprise. He’s always been alone in this bed, in this apartment, in this city. There’s no one by his side. But still, in this early morning, no warmth left in his bedsheets, Akaashi can’t help but notice. It’s not like it hurts. It’s just hollow.

He pushes the sheets off, taking a deep breath. The world moves forward. So should he.

“Akaashi,” Bokuto says, sitting next to him on a park bench. His arm is leaning on the backrest, yet they don’t touch. They only do when it comes to high fives or a pat on the back, but this is neither. This is different, feels different. This is the last time they’ll talk to each other before break starts, before Bokuto graduates, before Bokuto moves away to follow his dreams.

“What are you going to do after high school?” Bokuto asks, exactly the question Akaashi has no answer to. He isn’t particularly passionate about anything. Any interest of his have always been fleeting, and even if they had been somewhat substantial, none could compare to Bokuto’s definition of a passion. Bokuto always gave his hundred percent. Akaashi paled in comparison.

“College, probably,” he shrugs. It was the rational path. It could give him a few more years to figure it out. Which major, he wasn’t able to tell yet. Undecided in every aspect of his life. The only decisions he was good at were when to toss and who to toss to.

And the only thing he ever really wanted was unattainable, anyway. “Whatever you choose, I know you’ll be great,” Bokuto says, pumping his fist to Akaashi’s shoulder. The touch feels foreign. “It’s gonna be so weird not to have you around,” he adds, trailing off.

They stay put, enveloped in a thick silence as they watch the sun go down. There is nothing to be said. Although it feels like a farewell, there’s nothing Akaashi wants to say. It’s a lie, obviously, but if he keeps telling himself that, maybe the ache in his chest will go away. He doesn’t need to say anything. They don’t touch. They stay put.

The sky is dark when he feels a touch on his cheek. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, but Bokuto has his thumb under his eye, and only then does he feel the wetness of a stray tear. He’s been so careful.

Bokuto’s arm behind him finally comes in contact, the older’s hand cupping Akaashi’s shoulder in a side hug. This too feels foreign, but Akaashi doesn’t push away. This is a parting gift.

“Don’t worry, Akaashi,” Bokuto speaks up. The two should have gone home a long time ago. Akaashi doesn’t know why they’re still there. Bokuto could have stood up and left anytime. Akaashi could have stood up and left anytime. Yet they chose to sit in silence with each other, and Akaashi doesn’t know this simple fact will haunt him for years. “I’ll miss you too.”

Today, he’s hit with an awful case of writer’s block. It’s just one short story, fifteen thousand words, a given theme, but he can’t put down a single word without wincing. It’s frustrating. He hasn’t felt this frustrated in years. He’s overthinking, overthinking, it’s always been his ultimate demise. He can’t bring himself to stop. If he’s not thinking about which word to put down next, he’d only start to think about other, more dreadful things, and that’s not a path he wants to take.

He needs fresh air. He’s been in his apartment for too long now. He needs to take a walk, even at the risk of a wandering mind.

It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s in there anyway.

Bokuto visited the team as many times as he could. He texted Akaashi as much as he could, although the enthusiasm he showed was not nearly as reciprocated. Still, he put effort in everything he did, because that was him, that was Bokuto.

There would be periods of radio silence too. Weeks without a visit, weeks without a word. That was also Bokuto, always had been. Akaashi knew him by heart. Akaashi knew some days were like these, and some days ended up as weeks. It hurt to know his friend was struggling and he wasn’t there to help. And some days, it felt like getting a taste of his own medicine, the unresponsiveness mirroring Akaashi’s own. And it felt terrible to think this way.

Akaashi enrolled into college a year after. Bokuto still texted him with the same enthusiasm that had charmed Akaashi for so long. He could feel the exclamations through the screen, hear his loud voice and his laugh as he read the messages. But Akaashi couldn’t feel it in himself to smile back the way he used to.

It pained him. It pained him so much to know all he had loved was so close but so far, and that he was unable to mend the bridge he had created himself.

One day Bokuto asked him to help pick an outfit for a date. Two pictures attached.

Akaashi blocked the number.

He stares at the aisle, too many varieties of chips staring back at him. He doesn’t recall entering the grocery store, but here he is. He loses track of time too easily. He wonders what else he’s lost track of over the years, things he can’t remember having in the first place.

The snacks remind him of movie nights and pool parties. People say high school is the best time in your life. Others say it’s the worst. There are still many years to prove which of these applies, but Akaashi doesn’t like his odds. It stings to learn comfort food isn’t comforting anymore. It stings to know it’s been a decade and he can’t let go.

The theme he has to write is horror. He imagines a microparticule that found itself in a factory, infecting a single bag of chips. Digested by friends at a party. They begin to hallucinate a shadow monster, one that traps them in the house and waits the right time to consume them one by one. In the morning they are found dead. Scared by their own shadows. The end.

It’s a shit story, he knows it. He’s the one stuck inside. He’s the one waiting for a monster to eat him alive. Waiting for something that will never come true. In the end, he’s the one that has to live with himself. He shakes it off, grabbing a bag at random.

He’s the only one destroying himself.

“Your house is so cool, Akaashi,” Bokuto gasps as he gets in, removing his shoes while he observes the picture frames on the wall. His eyes widen as if to take in every detail, every square inch to be ingrained into his brain. “Everything about you is so cool.”

Akaashi can feel his face heat up. He doesn’t like how Bokuto can make him feel this way with so little words, but it’s also somewhat comforting, in a way. He escapes to the kitchen, grabbing two apples, and when his face is done being wild, he takes Bokuto up to his room.

“You were cute as a baby too,” he adds unprompted, putting down his bag next to Akaashi’s desk. They’re supposed to study together, but Akaashi can tell there will be very little studying involved. He hands over an apple to Bokuto, and he’s blushing again. This is going to be harder than expected.

They talk and talk, hours going by, but time doesn’t exist in their bubble here. Akaashi is a first year, almost second. Bokuto a year older. Akaashi wishes for time to stretch even farther, as much as it can, reach into infinity, where they can stay in his room and talk like this forever. They’d never run out of things to say. There is everything to be said.

He’s not a big talker, but he likes talking to Bokuto. He likes Bokuto.

Bokuto is a bit strange, he’ll be the first to admit. He’s obsessed with volleyball. He’s very vocal about his love of animals. He talks loud and uses words he clearly doesn’t know the meaning of to impress people. He’s the friendliest person he knows, but when he puts his game face on, he can get scary. He has ups and downs Akaashi still isn’t sure how to deal with yet, but he’s getting the hang of it. Bokuto has many weaknesses, but twice as many strengths.

He’s so different from Akaashi. He’s not the type of person Akaashi would have ever imagined befriending. But here they are, in the same little room, away from the world, away from the grasp of time, lying on Akaashi’s bed and talking about the bugs they hate or like.

Bokuto is scared of ladybugs. Akaashi is in love with Bokuto.

There’s a bakery by his apartment block. He seldom goes there, when he’s out of food and his belly is rumbling loud enough to the shake the earth he walks on. He’s not hungry, but he doesn’t want to go back to his apartment. He doesn’t belong there. Neither here, but he can pretend this warmth is his own.

He’s barely through the door when he notices. There’s a man sitting by the window looking out, a cup of hot chocolate in his hands. He looks peaceful. He has grey streaks in his hair. He’s grown up well. It’s been nine years, Akaashi thinks. Nine years, and he’s here, in the little bakery by Akaashi’s apartment.

He’s here. He’s here.

Bokuto looks up. Akaashi hasn’t moved. The golden eyes he knows so well take their time before landing on him, and if he wasn’t frozen before, he is now. They are so full of light, just like he remembers. His eyes have always been magnificent.

Bokuto doesn’t smile. Akaashi doesn’t deserve one, he knows this well. A slap in the face would be more fitting, but if this Bokuto was the same as he knew, he’d never have that wish granted. Instead, Bokuto leans back in his chair, puts the cup down. Then, the corners of his lips rise, careful, slow.

“Hey, Akaashi,” he says, his voice a bit rougher around the edges, lower, mature. It sounds like him but it doesn’t. He looks like Bokuto but he doesn’t. It’s the same careful smile he gave Akaashi that day on the bench when he cried for the loss of something he had never really misplaced.

Akaashi doesn’t know what to answer. So he doesn’t, and leaves.

“Akaashi,” Bokuto says, the two boys still lying on the bed. There are old magic stars on the ceiling that don’t glow anymore. Akaashi was embarrassed to show them, but Bokuto was enchanted. It summed them up well. Bokuto in his hopefulness, his desire to see the world in the brightest light. There’s a reason Akaashi loves his eyes. “It’s going to sound childish of me, but I want to ask,” he continues. “Do you think we can be friends forever?”

They are lying on the bed next to each other. Akaashi knows their arms are close enough to touch, yet they don’t. They might never do.

He says ‘might’ like he has hope. Bokuto is rubbing off him, it seems. “Sure,” he lies. He may be in love, but he doesn’t believe in happy endings.

He gets back to his apartment. Closes the door, it slams. He hadn’t intended to slam it. His neighbors might complain. He hopes they complain. He hopes something shakes him enough to bring him back to life. This is not a life he’s living. It’s too bleak. But it’s exactly what he created for himself.

He puts down the shopping bag. Takes out the chips he picked up at random. He frowns.

They’re Bokuto’s favorite.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


His apartment his cold. It’s early morning. His fridge is empty. He leaves, straight to the bakery. He walks in, his eyes darting to the spot by the window. Empty. He doesn’t know if the sigh that leaves him is one of longing or relief.

He orders a croissant. He is handed the croissant, along with a note. Tiny, folded in half, a used piece of napkin. A shiver runs down his spine. He doesn’t want to read it. He needs to read it.

He goes back to his apartment, croissant getting cold. It doesn’t matter. He slams the door again, and this time, he knows he’ll get a complaint. It’s too early for noise. It’s too early for this, for this note he hold, this folded napkin with instructions on top written almost unintelligibly, but Akaashi can read just fine. He knows Bokuto by heart.

_Short black hair, big glasses, long coat, his face looks angry, he’s really pretty. Please give this to him. Akaashi Keiji_.

Akaashi opens the note. A series of numbers. It’s more than that, and he knows it well. It’s an opportunity. An open door. Something to shake him enough to bring him back to life, if he lets it.

Akaashi is not a great risk taker. He rarely makes the right choice for himself. He hesitates too much, he overthinks, he never stops, never settles on anything. He’s always been undecided. Even after years, the only decisions he has ever been good at were when to toss and who to toss to.

More often than not, his choice was Bokuto.

**Author's Note:**

> was gonna end it when he realizes he picked bokutos fave but decided we need a little more hopeful endings these days  
> :D thank you for stopping by, have a great day xxx
> 
> my twt [@yyxykeiji](https://twitter.com/yyxykeiji)


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